Operation Richmond shows where the rot started

August 5, 2026 — 7:05pm

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“Handshake has occurred – it’s done.” So wrote Gavin Jennings, at the time Daniel Andrews’ most trusted ministerial colleague, after four days of secret talks in an undisclosed location secured an in-principle agreement to placate an odious union boss.

It was April 12, 2016, and the Andrews government was 1½ years into what would become a nine-year rule of extraordinary consequence. One of its most pressing headaches was how to stop United Firefighters Union secretary Peter Marshall from “raining hellfire down on the government” if he didn’t get what he wanted out of wage negotiations with the Country Fire Authority.

In that moment, as Marshall, some of his UFU comrades and an unidentified Labor senator popped the cork on a bottle of sparkling white to celebrate, Jennings thought he had completed what he called his “secret mission” on behalf of a premier desperate to avoid an ugly industrial war with the same firefighters who’d campaigned for them at the 2014 election.

This was also Marshall’s view, IBAC heard, as his subsequent comment to a government adviser made clear: “This agreement was negotiated with f---in’ Jennings in a back room. It was endorsed by f---in’ Andrews and cabinet.”

And in that moment, Andrews sidelined the minister nominally responsible for the CFA and other emergency services, undercutting the ability of the CFA management to hold a strong line in negotiations, compromising a senior public servant by deploying him as a political operative and diminishing his own capacity to stand up to Marshall and other union bosses in future disputes.

The final report of Operation Richmond tabled in parliament on Wednesday serves as the origin story for all that became wrong within the Andrews government.

The IBAC investigation into this murky episode, Operation Richmond, does not contain findings of corruption against Andrews or anyone else. As successive IBAC commissioners have remarked and the government now accepts through its promise of reform, the narrow definition of corruption with which IBAC has worked since its inception, limits the scope of its investigations and capacity to make adverse findings.

Five things to know about Operation Richmond

Instead, the final report of Operation Richmond tabled in parliament on Wednesday serves as the origin story for all that became wrong within the Andrews government. Although it is the last to........

© The Age